In conventional broadcasting networks, Moving Picture Experts Group-2 Transport Stream (MPEG-2 TS) has been generally used for transmission of multimedia contents. The MPEG-2 TS has been used as a representative transmission technique for transmitting a bitstream in which a plurality of broadcasting programs (multiple encoded video bitstreams) are multiplexed in a transmission environment having an error. For example, the MPEG-2 TS may be suitable for use in digital TV broadcasting in the multimedia era. However, the MPEG-2 TS has several limitations in supporting a multimedia service. More specifically, the MPEG-2 TS has inefficiency in transmission due to unidirectional communication and fixed frame size and unnecessary overhead in transmission due to the use of a transmission protocol and an Internet protocol (IP) that are specific to audio/video. Thus, the MPEG newly proposes the MPEG Media Transport (MMT) standard as one of multimedia transmission technologies for supporting a multimedia service based on the MPEG technology. In particular, the MMT standard has been proposed to overcome the limitations of the MPEG-2 TS.
For example, the MMT standard may be applied to efficiently transmit hybrid contents through a heterogeneous network. Herein, the hybrid contents refer to a set of contents having multimedia elements of video/audio/application/widget, etc. The heterogeneous network means a network in which a broadcast network, a communication network, and so forth coexist.
Moreover, the MMT standard defines a transmission technology that is friendly with the IP that is a basic technique on a transmission network. That is, the MMT standard is intended to provide an efficient MPEG transmission technique in a multimedia service environment that changes based on the IP, and is under standardization with steady research thereon.